Stylish Reds on the march

MANCHESTER United boss Jose Mourinho has questioned why his style is now appreciated in England.

The Red Devils are unbeaten in their last 15 league games following their comfortable victory at the King Power Stadium.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Juan Mata scored to earn United a comfortable victory and leave the Foxes deep in relegation danger.

And Mourinho, who won the title three times during two spells with Chelsea, asked why his style is accepted this year.

He said: "My team is playing very well but for many, many years in my career, especially in this country, when my teams were ruthless and when they were phenomenal defensively and very good in the counter attack, I listened week after week it was not enough, in spite of winning the title three times.

PHENOMENAL

"It looks like this season to be phenomenal defensively and be good at the counter attack is art, so it's a big change in England.

"I don't want to change the profile of our play.

"This is the way we want to play. I don't want to be the manager of a team that plays very well, creates chances and doesn't win matches. We need to score goals and we did."

Mourinho was also full of praise for Mkhitaryan after the Armenia international opened the scoring to continue his resurgence following a slow start after his summer move from Borussia Dortmund.

He added: "Sometimes the best way to protect the players is not to play them. in your chair, your perspective if a player is not playing is the manager is disturbing him.

"It's not true, sometimes we don't play players and we protect them."

As for the Foxes, their goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel has blasted his team's "embarrassing" title defence.

The Premier League champions are just a point above the relegation zone after their latest wretched defeat.

Schmeichel told Sky Sports: "It's not a situation that's comfortable at all. We're the reigning champions and quite frankly it's been terrible, it's been embarrassing.

"It's not good enough and it sums our season up at the moment. Let's not talk about last season, last season's gone, as you can clearly see.

"We have to improve right now. It's time for every single one of us, right from the top to the bottom of this club, to stand up and be counted because if we don't we're going to end up getting relegated, and nobody wants that."

RIFT

When asked about a supposed rift between some of Leicester's players and manager Claudio Ranieri, Schmeichel added: "I'm not going to comment on any newspaper speculation. I know what's going on in the dressing room.

"We're a group of players who are low on confidence but certainly not low on fight.

"We'll fight to the end, whatever that might be but I can guarantee every player in there is hurting."